An earlier version of this article misstated the given name of a Mets pitcher. He is Jacob deGrom, not Jason. The error was repeated in a picture caption.
Do you ever feel pride of authorship as the current edition of the Mets runs onto the field?
You put that question to Omar Minaya, the former Mets general manager, and he gives a laugh of pleasure, and deflection. “You watch Jeurys Familia throw on Labor Day and Hansel Robles strike out four in two innings, and you’re really happy for them,” he replies. “There’s a part of you that always sees them as kids.”
I give general managers a hard time; I acknowledge that. Some of that is deserved, and sometimes maybe it just looks a lot easier than it is to balance budgets, contract demands, pushy agents, egomaniacal players and owners, and a lot of ink-stained reporters.
Sandy Alderson appeared to sleepwalk through one or two trade deadlines, but he has been fully awake and quite brilliant this time around, and the Mets are pennant contenders as a result of his moves. When the Wilpons practically pushed Minaya out a window in the fall of 2010, many New Yorkers grumped that Minaya had earned his defenestration.
PhotoCredit Barton Silverman/The New York TimesI argued against that at the time. Now the facts argue for more reconsideration. A bill of indictment against Minaya in 2010 was that he had left the Mets’ minor league system barren of talent.
Let’s take a stroll around the current Mets infield. That big power-hitting lug Lucas Duda at first base? He was a Minaya-era draft pick, as was second baseman Daniel Murphy, whose hands are iron-coated but whose bat is gold-plated. Shortstop Ruben Tejada, completing a smart comeback year, was a find from Panama.
Wilmer Flores, Citi Field’s own Fountain of Tears, plays shortstop and second and swings a handsome bat. Minaya’s scouts signed Flores in Venezuela when he was 16.
Minaya’s scouts discovered Juan Lagares, the once and future center fielder, playing in a softball league in the Dominican Republic. “We tested his explosiveness and jumping ability, and he was right there with Carlos Gomez and Jose Reyes,” Minaya recalled.
PhotoCredit Alex Brandon/Associated PressNow we arrive at the golden heart of the matter: pitching. Starters Matt Harvey, Jacob deGrom, Steven Matz and Jon Niese were Minaya draft picks. In the bullpen, there is Familia and his heavy fastball and heavier sinker, along with Robles and Bobby Parnell.
Oh, and Manager Terry Collins? Minaya hired him as a minor league field coordinator. “He was going to retire before we hired him,” Minaya said.
Minaya, now 57, is a baseball lifer, a minor league player of no great talent, then a keen-eyed scout and general manager. He gives much of the credit for the good that happened during his Mets tenure to his scouts: Ismael Cruz, Rudy Terrasas, Ramon Pena, Larry Izzo and others. These treasure hunters discovered not-so-obvious gems: Matz went in the second round of the 2009 draft, with the 72nd pick; deGrom fell to the ninth round of the 2010 draft, taken with the 272nd pick.
None of this is to diminish the role of Alderson. He made four excellent trades this season: for Juan Uribe and Kelly Johnson; for Addison Reed; for Tyler Clippard; and, of course, for Kid Universe, Yoenis Cespedes. Beyond that, the ecology of a baseball team is not that of a football team.
Continue reading the main storyThe Seahawks draft a stud receiver or running back, and he will be judged a champ or a bust halfway through his rookie season. In baseball, to draft a player is to embrace guiding a teenager through to adulthood. If all goes well, if that player masters his off-speed pitches and the stress of the minor leagues and does not blow out his elbow or end up terminally baffled by the curveball, he might make his debut in the majors two, three, four years later.
Robles, a fastball thrower out of the Dominican Republic, joined a Mets rookie league team in 2009 and made his debut this season. Lagares labored for seven years in the minors; Flores for five; Duda for the better part of four.
Minaya gives repeated credit to Alderson and Paul DePodesta, the Mets’ vice president for player development and amateur scouting. They nurtured and molded these players into major leaguers. Coaches, managers, minor league batting coaches — all are sensei.
“You’re just happy to be part of something that is working today; a story is not written by one man,” Minaya said. “If I said I always knew all these kids would be this good, I’d be lying.”
Continue reading the main storyOne general manager’s success can become transactional gold for the next. So Minaya took a calculated gamble and signed a little-known knuckleballer, R. A. Dickey. He won 20 games and a Cy Young Award for the Mets. Then Alderson smartly flipped Dickey for Noah Syndergaard and Travis d’Arnaud, two vertebrae in the spine of the current Mets.
(A writer who resembles this one argued against that Dickey trade, terming it a potential disaster; this could be adduced as yet more proof that this writer’s crystal ball is permanently cracked.)
After a lifetime in baseball, Minaya now serves as a senior adviser to Tony Clark, the executive director of the Major League Baseball Players Association. Minaya pays special attention to what will become of the Cuban ballplayers who cross the straits to America and sometimes upend the American game.
“Cespedes is single-handedly changing the face of a franchise this year,” Minaya noted.
He did not have to add that the franchise was one he helped build.
An earlier version of this article misstated the given name of a Mets pitcher. He is Jacob deGrom, not Jason. The error was repeated in a picture caption.
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